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July 06, 2011

Comments

Micaela

In part, I think the Zona Oeste's explosive growth can be attributed to the government-subsidized housing projects - Minha Casa Minha Vida, specifically - which reinforce the prefeitura's longstanding agenda socialspatial segregation. The MCMV residences have been built almost exclusively on the city's periphery in areas with little access to services, transport, and infrastructure in general.

eric

This phenomenon has happening in São paulo since the last 20-30 years. Cycles. Rich neighborhoods are seeing their population decreasing while the periphery "explodes". Right now, its completely impossible to build any "Minha Casa, Minha Vida" in the great São Paulo area, they are trying to build this kind of housing far away, in the eastern part of the state, where the land cost less.No need to say that most of the infrastructure already built and to be built is concentrated in the fancy areas in the state capital. All our mayors have been involved in real estate scandals, Kassab is in the local news every week, so its fair to say real estate speculation is totally connected to lobbying and campaign financing here. The governments are greedy and always want to be part of the business. The approvals are reached as long as the construction corporations tip the mayors properly. The worst thing is that the weakest people are signing "debt sentences" to buy over evaluated homes, what make them bank slaves for life.If any crisis hit Brazil, they will end up with the unwanted homes. The wealthier part of the population will own the best areas with the best infrastructure, and with their savings, since a huge part of them don´t finance their real estate anymore, will even be able to buy devaluated real estate to speculate later in case they visualize a better future cycle. In the US at least there are good roads everywhere, so you can commute to the suburbs to escape. In Brazil bad roads, bad public transportation and/or bad traffic are a part of the speculatory agenda.

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